Chapter 5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades

We rested and otherwise refreshed ourselves two or three hours at Gien, but by that time the news was abroad that the young girl commissioned of God to deliver France was come; wherefore, such a press of people flocked to our quarters to get sight of her that it seemed best to seek a quieter place; so we pushed on and halted at a small village called Fierbois.

We were now within six leagues of the King, who was a the Castle of Chinon.  Joan dictated a letter to him at once, and I wrote it.  In it she said she had come a hundred and fifty leagues to bring him good news, and begged the privilege of delivering it in person.  She added that although she had never seen him she would know him in any disguise and would point him out.

The two knights rode away at once with the letter.  The troop slept all the afternoon, and after supper we felt pretty fresh and fine, especially our little group of young Domremians.  We had the comfortable tap-room of the village inn to ourselves, and for the first time in ten unspeakably long days were exempt from bodings and terrors and hardships and fatiguing labors.  The Paladin was suddenly become his ancient self again, and was swaggering up and down, a very monument of self-complacency.  Noel Rainguesson said: 

“I think it is wonderful, the way he has brought us through.”

“Who?” asked Jean.

“Why, the Paladin.”

The Paladin seemed not to hear.

“What had he to do with it?” asked Pierre d’Arc.

“Everything.  It was nothing but Joan’s confidence in his discretion that enabled her to keep up her heart.  She could depend on us and on herself for valor, but discretion is the winning thing in war, after all; discretion is the rarest and loftiest of qualities, and he has got more of it than any other man in France—­more of it, perhaps, than any other sixty men in France.”

“Now you are getting ready to make a fool of yourself, Noel Rainguesson,” said the Paladin, “and you want to coil some of that long tongue of yours around your neck and stick the end of it in your ear, then you’ll be the less likely to get into trouble.”

“I didn’t know he had more discretion than other people,” said Pierre, “for discretion argues brains, and he hasn’t any more brains than the rest of us, in my opinion.”

“No, you are wrong there.  Discretion hasn’t anything to do with brains; brains are an obstruction to it, for it does not reason, it feels.  Perfect discretion means absence of brains.  Discretion is a quality of the heart—­solely a quality of the heart; it acts upon us through feeling.  We know this because if it were an intellectual quality it would only perceive a danger, for instance, where a danger exists; whereas—­”

“Hear him twaddle—­the damned idiot!” muttered the Paladin.